


The Things They [Didn't] Know

by demowrites



Series: Occupational Hazards [7]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Abuse, Other, being a glorified science experiment can have some traumatic effects, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:28:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21553996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demowrites/pseuds/demowrites
Summary: The secrets in the silence.
Relationships: Ortega/Sidestep (Fallen Hero)
Series: Occupational Hazards [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1418773
Kudos: 7





	The Things They [Didn't] Know

Ida hated hands.

They had forgotten, as all ghosts tend to do, what touch feels like--what intention feels like as it trails down your skin to claim the more desirable pieces. 

They often felt like leftover scraps, like whatever was of value was ripped away from them the second that they opened their eyes and found the familiar, artificial, sterile walls void of sunlight. Memories of rubber fingers and the smell of antiseptic followed the curves of their elbows, leaving a light dusting of IV track marks down to the faded roadmap of the battles forgotten in Sidestep’s eulogy. 

_People don’t know that though._

Ortega remembers Ida in their prime. They were always skittish-- unused to social interaction in a way that they found refreshing, endearing. Curiosity turned into active effort, tracking triggers and attempting to decipher density from obscurity, and eventually there was an opening. It was a gradual thing--because, hell, nothing in their relationship was instantaneous--but he thought he had dissuaded the sensory alarm bells from traumas past that he meant no harm. He thought he could follow the same steps and assemble all the fragments back together again that seemingly held the two of them together. 

A few distant memories and sweet nothings slipped through, and Ida let him believe that all those moments still meant the same thing. But whenever his hands wove into their hair, gently entangled their fingers, and grabbed their shoulder, the mask would slip just a fraction--and in that brief moment, they would hate Ortega, just a little. 

In that moment right before his fingers take their target they feel a moment of resentment, of repulsion, that someone is taking another part of them. That his touch will be yet another imprint out of many hindering the thick scars, sliding down and settling into the smooth orange graphs lining their skin. Another memory to carry, another moment of failed autonomy, another scar to mark.

Then time carries on, Ida adjusts the mask as they attempt to swallow the residual guilt for projecting the nameless blurred faces of scientists onto the brown eyes and crooked, moustachioed smile of their only friend. 

They didn’t want to do that. 

They didn’t want to hate someone that cared enough to remember their name and punch someone for the sake of protecting it. 

_He doesn’t know that though._

Projecting the inner most hauntings of their drug induced farm days doesn’t happen with every touch, not anymore. Ortega just happens to be too familiar, too intimate--carefully questioning what they could handle and not crossing it. Ida struggles with having to reconsider and relearn what that means, to have someone touch you and ask for consent, to not mean you harm.

Old dogs, new things.

_They don’t know that though._


End file.
